Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (13 page)

W
E FIRST THOUGHT ABOUT GOING
to Uniontown, Kentucky, when Suzanne Tucker told us she wanted to drive from Hot Springs and visit us somewhere on the road. She was going to bring our former dog Spot with her.

We picked Uniontown as a place to rendezvous because it’s on the Ohio River. When we were in the old river towns of Hickman and Paducah, Kentucky, Patricia and I commented several times how much Suzanne would have loved them. She’s into antiques and old architecture, so we figured Uniontown might be a good place to meet her.

The first time we mentioned to anyone that we planned to go there, it was to a coal miner in Sturgis, Kentucky. We were in a city park camped next to a small lake where he, his wife and little dog had stopped to visit us. He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his tee-shirt pocket and said, “You want to go to Uniontown?”

I replied, “Is there a problem with that?”

He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and blew the smoke out before saying, “Oh, there’s no real problem. It’s just that nobody really
wants
to go to Uniontown.”

“Why not?”

It was as if the miner was contemplating what he was going to say next as he took another puff. “Let me put it to you this way. A buddy of mine had a girl friend ask him to kiss her where it stinks. So he took her to Uniontown and kissed her.”

I laughed. “It’s that bad, eh?”

“It’s that bad. Why do you want to go there?”

After I told him we wanted to rendezvous with a friend in an interesting place, he shook his head and chuckled, “It’d be interesting alright. But not the kind of interesting you’re looking for. Meet your friend in Morganfield. That’s a nice town.”

It was September 23
^rd
–the first full day of fall and my birthday. Patricia suggested we take the day off the road to celebrate. “This lake is a pretty place. Let’s spend your birthday here.”

“But what I really want to do is walk,” I said.

So we packed up and headed out of town. On the edge of Sturgis we stopped at a supermarket where Patricia went in for groceries and I stayed in the parking lot with Della. While she was shopping, the fluffy cumulus clouds that had dominated the sky began to twist and swirl into ugly gray thunder-heads. By the time she came out of the store with a full shopping cart, the sky was completely overcast and the smell of rain was in the air.

Patricia opened the kitchen door of our cart, looked up and said, “Wow! I can’t believe how much the sky changed while I was in that store.” She shook her head and started stuffing supplies wherever she could. “This isn’t looking none too good to me.”

Sturgis is situated on a low ridge. And as we walked down it into the farm lands, lightning began to streak down into the valley and strike up on the hilltops all around us. Instead of rumbling about in the clouds, the thunder cracked and exploded across the sky. We were a little over a mile from the supermarket when heavy drops started splashing into the side of my face. So we pulled our rain suits on, and I had just snapped mine shut, when the downpour commenced. It was a loud storm, so I was yelling when I said to Patricia, “You climb in the cart! No sense in both of us getting soaked!”

For better than an hour Della and I trudged north along US 60 through the deluge that swept across the highway in curtains. We were about five miles out of Sturgis, when suddenly the air directly in front of us exploded with a blinding white flash. The boom made my ears pop, and Della reared up with a grunt and a snort. From the cart, Patricia screamed, “Holy Shit!”

Then she yelled, “Are you okay, Baby?”

“Damn, that was close!”

A mile farther we came to an abandoned farm on the right side of the highway. Out front was a huge spreading oak. We were pulling under it as the rain began to let up, and by the time we staked out Della, it was just sprinkling. So we took advantage of the lull and pitched the tent.

Ours was not an expensive state-of-the-art tent. It was a cheap dome that we bought at Wal-mart. No matter what we did to it, the seams on the bottom leaked. Then in Paducah, a zipper on one of the two front doors failed. So in Marion I sewed that door shut.

Under the Kentucky oak tree, as I staked the tent down, the sky opened up with another downpour. Patricia scrambled inside with her arms wrapped around our bedding. I was about to pound a stake down through the soggy grass, when I heard the tent door zipper stop abruptly. My wife screamed. “Not now!”

“What’s wrong!”

“Now
this
stinking zipper won’t work.”

I scurried around to the front of the tent. The rain was tumultuous, and the door was wide open with the storm pouring in on our bed. It was a southern wind, but not a warm one. For the first time since we hit the road, I felt cold. Wet and cold, and it looked like bedtime wasn’t going to be any better.

We tied a big piece of plastic across the top of the tent so it hung over the open door. It didn’t keep all the rain out, but it was better than no door at all. After our bed was made, Patricia and I climbed into the cart and waited for the rain to let up.

In the middle of the downpour I announced, “It’s toddy time.”

For my birthday, we bought a bottle of bourbon. Our intention was to toast my birthday before we went to bed that night. So, as the storm raged on I pulled the bottle out from under the cart seat and poured some into a plastic cup. Then I asked my wife, “Would Madame care for a shot of water in her cocktail?”

“But of course.”

I held the cup out in the storm for a moment.

After a toast, Patricia sighed. “I feel bad. Your birthday has turned into an awful mess.”

Right then it seemed like the storm suddenly got worse. The sky sprang to life with staccato flashes of white light, and the thunder kept a sustained rumble overhead. For a few moments, I just stared out at the storm, then I turned to Patricia, lifted my plastic cup and said, “I can’t think of a better celebration. How many men can say they spent their fifty-third birthday living their dream? Not many. No, Baby, I’m having a great birthday!”

After the miner told us what he thought of Uniontown, we decided to by pass it. We would meet Suzanne and Spot in Morganfield.

“You aren’t going to Uniontown?”

She was a thin woman with white hair, and when she asked that question she was leaning out the driver’s window of a mini-van on the outskirts of Morganfield.

Her name was Margaret and she was insistent. “But you’ve got to come to Uniontown!”

“Why?”

“It’s the most wonderful old river town in the world. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. It has the best people. You’ll love it. I have an extra bedroom and your donkey can stay in the yard.”

After I told Margaret we had already made plans to rendezvous with Suzanne in Morganfield, she said “Then after your friend leaves, you can come to Uniontown.”

“Well, it really is out of our way. And–”

A desperate whine was in her voice. “Oh, please.”

“We’ll see.”

Morganfield was a pretty little town of 4,000 people. Most of the homes were old Victorian or Queen Anne style houses, surrounded by manicured lawns with huge hardwood trees. The downtown buildings were mostly red brick, and looked like they had been built in the early 1800s. The miner was right. Morganfield would be a great place to rendezvous with Suzanne.

She and Spot met up with us at the American Legion Park on the east side of town. In the two and a half months since we last saw him, Spot had more than doubled in size. When he first hopped out of the motor home, Spot didn’t seem to know who we were. That is, until he spotted Della. Then he went crazy running around her and us. He was obviously glad to see us, and until then, I didn’t realize how much I missed him.

That night Suzanne took us out to dinner at the Feed Mill Restaurant. When the waitress first came to the table she asked where we were from. So I gave her one of our flyers. When she brought us the check at the end of the meal she asked, “From Morganfield where you headed?”

Patricia said, “We’re going to Uniontown!”

The waitress made a face like she had just smelled something bad. “Oh, no.” With her head she motioned toward the kitchen. “We all hoped you wouldn’t say that.”

She was shaking her head as she walked away from our table.

The next day, Patricia and Suzanne took off in the motor home to explore, while I stayed in camp to do some writing. Down the hill from our campsite was a football field with water spigots. I had just filled one of our jugs, when I saw a car pull up to our camp. A woman got out and carried a cardboard box to our picnic table. When she saw me toting the jug up, the hill she waved and yelled, “Hi. Remember me? It’s Margaret from Uniontown.”

In the box were canned goods like pork and beans, corn and potted meat. She also had a couple of loaves of white bread, a cake mix, macaroni and cheese, and a box of Hamburger Helper. After she showed me what was in the box, Margaret said “I thought you guys might get hungry before you got to Uniontown.”

“I appreciate it, but we have plenty of food. I don’t know where we’d put all this stuff.”

She pulled a ten dollar bill out of her pocket and handed it to me. “Oh, you’ll find room. And I know you have room for this–don’t you?”

“Well, yes. But–”

“When do you think you’ll get to Uniontown?”

I held the bill out to her. “You don’t need to bribe us to come to Uniontown.”

She took a step backwards and laid her hands across her chest. “I’m not bribing you. I just want to help you guys out. Please keep that.”

I thanked her and stuck the bill in my pocket.

“You’re still coming to Uniontown, aren’t you?”

Everyone in Morganfield said the B&M Café was the place to have breakfast. It’s small and most of the seating was at a long L-shaped counter that faced the open kitchen. So the customers, cooks, and cashiers were all in the same space, and most conversations were café-wide affairs. We saw the same customers both mornings we ate there, and everybody knew everybody–except us.

Our second breakfast at the B&M was Thursday, just before Suzanne and Spot left to go back to Hot Springs. My butt had just landed on one of the stools, when a man on the other end of the counter yelled, “Hey, I figured out who you people are. When you left yesterday, we were all wondering. Then I seen your picture in the paper this morning.”

A man half way up the counter asked, “They’re in the paper?”

“They’re walking to Maine with a mule.”

The remainder of breakfast was interspersed with questions and comments about our journey. I was drinking my last cup of coffee, when the man at the far end of the counter yelled, “Where ya’ going from here?”

With gusto my wife said. “We’re going to Uniontown!”

The café erupted in laughter with some men slapping the backs of the guys next to them. Dishes and silverware rattled as several fists pounded the counter. Through the laughs and coughs could be heard, “Not Uniontown!” “Oh my God! Of all places.”

When we walked out of the café, Suzanne said, “You know, you guys have no choice. You’ve
got
to go to Uniontown.”